Agree to Differ

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Image: Christiane Monsieur

In the Democratic Republic of the Congo, after discussions based on content from radio programmes, women are now allowed to eat eggs and fish

one legitimate or valid system of knowledge may be danger-

ous for the future of food security.

Dialogue between genders

Traditional knowledge is usually developed, shared and

transmitted along gender, age, socioeconomic status, occu-

pational and other culturally-defined groups. Typically,

men and women have different sets of knowledge regarding

specific plants or varieties which, in some cultures, are seen

as men’s plants or women’s plants. Development literature

refers to food crops as women’s, while cash crops would

be men’s. Reality is much more complex than this, and

there is great variation between cultures and regions, but

differentiated gender-based plant knowledge systems are

very common.

The fact that women in many contexts have the primary

responsibility for the provision of food, fodder and medicine,

means that they use a much wider diversity of species than

men and that they play a fundamental role in the conserva-

tion of agrobiodiversity.

Among the Tanimuka and Yukuna from the north-west

Amazon, for example, resources are managed through

gender-based knowledge, practices, innovations and skills.

“Women manage swidden fields and house gardens and

conserve the bulk of agrobiodiversity, while the men manage

and conserve the rainforests and procure wild animal species

and wild and semi-domesticated plant species. There is thus a

complementary, but differentiated, gender-based traditional

ecological knowledge held between men and women.”

If humanity is to benefit from neglected crops and wild

plants for current and future food security, it is fundamen-

tal to listen to women’s voices within the different cultures.

In the same way as listening only to the dominant urban

science-based system of knowledge carries the threat of

losing traditional knowledge, listening only to men’s voices

carries the threat not only of losing precious knowledge,

but whole systems of knowledge, as men’s and women’s

knowledge is frequently complementary and necessary to

each other.

An intracultural dialogue, between men and women, is

thus as important as the dialogue between cultures.

One very successful example of bringing out and

valorising women’s voices is the Food and Agriculture

Organization’s Dimitra project.

Since 1988, the project

has set up some 1,000 listeners’ clubs in six countries in

Africa.

Gathered around a solar-powered radio, more

recently paired up with a mobile phone, groups of women,

men, youth or mixed groups meet to discuss their own

gree

iffer